Johnny Lee Gibson, a 58-year-old from Florence, South Carolina, has been sentenced to 90 months in federal prison for sex trafficking. The U.S. District Court issued the sentence today in Washington D.C., with U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., FBI Special Agent Sean Ryan, and Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith announcing the decision.
Gibson, also known as "Preach," pleaded guilty on December 11, 2024, to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking through force, fraud, and coercion. In addition to his prison term, Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered Gibson to serve ten years of supervised release and mandated that he register as a sex offender.
Court documents revealed that Gibson recruited women addicted to drugs for his commercial sex operation across several states including Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. His activities spanned from 1994 until his arrest at a motel in Brooklawn, New Jersey on July 25, 2024.
Gibson utilized online advertisements for promoting sexual services of these women. In one such advertisement from 2019 targeting the District area markets like DMV (District of Columbia-Maryland-Virginia), he highlighted one woman’s services with phrases such as “100% Real and always discreet...”
Upon his arrest in July 2024, Gibson admitted in a recorded statement to trafficking five women and controlling them by providing access to drugs while acting as their pimp.
The case was investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office's Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. This task force comprises FBI agents along with other federal agents and detectives from northern Virginia and the District of Columbia focused on tackling child exploitation and human trafficking crimes.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Karen Ditzler Shinskie and Rachel Forman are prosecuting the case.